Global heartland : displaced labor, transnational lives, and local placemaking / Faranak Miraftab.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Global Heartland is the account of diverse, dispossessed, and displaced people brought together in a former sundown town in Illinois. Recruited to work in the local meat-processing plant, African Americans, Mexicans, and West Africans re-create the town in unexpected ways. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the US, Mexico, and Togo, Faranak Miraftab shows how this workforce is produced for the global labor market; how the displaced workers' transnational lives help them stay in these jobs; and how they negotiate their relationships with each other across the lines of ethnicity, race, language, and nationality as they make a new home. Beardstown is not an exception but an example of local-global connections that make for local development. Focusing on a locality in a non-metropolitan region, this work contributes to urban scholarship on globalization by offering a fresh perspective on politics and materialities of placemaking.

Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Global Heartland -- Part I: Beardstown: A Place in the World -- 1 Welcome to Porkopolis -- 2 It All Changed Overnight -- Part II: Displaced Labor -- 3 Michoacán's Largest Export Is People -- 4 Winning the Lottery in Togo -- 5 Detroit: "The First Third World City of the U.S." -- Part III: Outsourced Lives -- 6 Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction -- Part IV: We Wanted Workers, We Got People -- 7 We Wanted Workers -- 8 We Got People -- Conclusion: The Global in My Backyard -- Appendix: Demographic and Labor Tables, Profile of Interviewees -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.

English.

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